Hate crimes against persons decreased in 2015 over the previous year. Anti-black, Jewish, and gay-male sentiment was most common.

The FBI just released new information on hate crimes—defined as "crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity"—that occurred in America last year. Here are six key points and takeaways that are crucial to understanding the data.

1. The new report covers incidents that occurred in 2015. This seems like the first important fact to note, since some people have already been trying to pass the data off as a response to Donald Trump's election as president. That's obviously impossible. Trump did start his campaign seriously in the summer of 2015, which leaves open the possibility for his influence on bias-based crimes last year. But other influential events of 2015 include major Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris and Turkey; the mass shooting carried out by ISIS supporters in San Bernardino, California; the rising refugee crisis in Europe; an array of "officer involved shootings," anti-police brutality protests, and Black Lives Matter activism within the U.S.; and the transgender bathroom issue breaking into the mainstream media/political scene for the first time, to name a few. Any serious explanation for a shift in violence against various minorities last year must take all of that (and many other factors) into account, so it's disappointing to see people immediately leap to pin new data to "Trumpism." One needn't feel love for Trump and his fan club to find any explanation that starts and stops with them woefully lacking, partisan, and, to the extent that it clouds out analysis of other factors, possibly destructive.

2. The data is incomplete + inherently increase-prone every year. The FBI collects national data on all sorts of crimes as part of its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. It has done so since the 1930s. In 1990, it started specifically collecting data "about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity," or what it calls "hate crimes." The first FBI hate-crime statistics included reporting data from just 11 states. Since 1990, the number of law-enforcement agencies participating in the FBI's hate-crime reporting program has grown relatively steadily, meaning that in terms of sheer number of incidents, part (or perhaps all) of any increases may be attributed to an increase in the number of jurisdictions and agencies reporting hate-crime data to the FBI.

The 2015 statistics include information from law-enforcement agencies representing some 283,884,034 people, or about 89 percent of the U.S. population. This is actually down from 2014 and 2013 (when 15,494 and 15,016 agencies participated, respectively), but up from 2012, when just 13,022 participated.*

3. Hate-crimes against persons are down over last year. The FBI reported a total of 5,850 incidents from 2015 that it categorized as hate crimes, up slightly over 2014, when 5,479 incidents were reported. Overall, 65 of these biased-based incidents were classified as "crimes against society," 3,646 as "crimes against persons," and 2,338 as property crimes (with some incidents counted in more than one category). This represents a decrease in crimes against persons since 2014, when 4,048 such crimes were reported.

4.Nearly two-thirds of all hate crimes involved no physical violence. Of all 2015 incidents that the FBI deemed hate crimes, a little more than one third—36.5 percent—involved some sort of physical violence against an individual or group of individuals. Simple assault accounted for 24.5 percent of all incidents, aggravated assault for 11.6 percent, rape for 0.22 percent, and murder for 0.14 percent.

Looking at just crimes against people, the most common occurrence was intimidation, which made up 41 percent of the incidents in this category. Simple assault accounted for 39 percent of crimes against people and aggravated assault for 18.7 percent. There were also 13 rapes and 8 murders in 2015 that were classified as hate crimes.

In the property-crime category, vandalism was by far the most common type of incident, accounting for about 73 percent of hate-crimes against property. Robbery, burglary, and larceny accounted for 22 percent, arson for 1.3 percent, and motor-vehicle theft for 0.9 percent.

5. Crimes motivated by racial/ethnic bias were the most common type of hate crime. Among crimes deemed "single bias incidents" (i.e., those motivated by just racial animosity, not racial and anti-gay animosity), bias based on race or ethnicity was by far the most common, accounting for nearly 57 percent all incidents. Religious bias drove a little more than a fifth of all incidents (21.26 percent), while crimes motivated by sexual-orientation bias accounted for a little under a fifth (18 percent). The remainder of the incidents were classified as bias against transgender or gender non-conforming people (1.94 percent), anti-disability bias (1.26 percent), gender bias (0.39 percent), or multiple biases (0.55 percent).

6. Blacks, Jews, and gay men were the most common hate-crime targets. For race and ethnicity-related incidents, anti-black bias was the clear leader, accounting for 1,745 of the 3,310 such incidents recorded, or around 53 percent. Crimes categorized as anti-white accounted for just 18.5 percent.

The rest of the racial/ethnic incident breakdown is as follows: anti-Hispanic or Latino bias, 9 percent; anti-Arab bias, 1 percent; anti-Asian, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander bias, 3.5 percent; and anti-native American bias, 4 percent. About 3.4 percent were classified as crimes against multiple races or ethnic groups, and 7.8 percent of the incidents were classified as "other." There were the exact same number of incidents deemed anti-ispanic or Latino in 2014 (299 incidents) as there were in 2015.

FBI 2015 Hate-Crime Report

For sexual-orientation based incidents, gay men were way more likely to be targets than lesbian or bisexual counterparts. Anti-gay male bias accounted for 664 of the reported 1,053 sexual-orientation based incidents, or 63 percent. Anti-lesbian bias was behind just 12.9 percent of the incidents, anti-bisexual bias 2.9 percent, and anti-heterosexual bias 1.8 percent. Around 19 percent of the incidents were classified as being based on general anti-LGBT animus. For incidents classified as hate crimes based on gender identity specifically, 64 percent were anti-transgender and 36 percent were against gender-non-conforming individuals.

For crimes motivated by gender-bias, women were the target nearly 70 percent of the time and men 30 percent of the time (though the total number of incidents in the gender category was just 23 incidents).

For crimes motivated by religious bias, anti-Jewish sentiment was by far the most common prejudice, accounting for 664 or the 1,244 identified incidents, or 53.4 percent. The next most targeted religion was Islam, with anti-Muslim bias behind 20.7 percent of the incidents. Non-specified religious bias or that which targeted multiple religions was the next most prevalent (11.8 percent of incidents), followed by anti-Catholic incidents (4.3 percent), anti-Eastern Orthodox incidents (3.9 percent), anti-Protestant incidents (3 percent), anti-other Christian incidents (1.2 percent), anti-Mormon incidents (0.64 percent), and anti-Hindu or anti-Sikh incidents (0.88 percent). There were two reports of hate crimes targeting atheists, one anti-Buddhist incident, and one anti-Jehovah's Witness incident. For comparison, in 2014, 154 incidents of religious bias were categorized anti-Islamic, while 609 were anti-Jewish, 64 were anti-Catholic, and 25 were anti-Protestant.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

As a friend of mine can attest, having been beaten severely about 20 years ago, apparently Indian on White violence isn’t even a crime, hateful or otherwise. His several jagged scars says something else, but wasn’t even worthy of a report being filed by the John Q. Laws. Oddly, he’s a little bitter over it. I THINK he probably voted Trump. He’s one of those asshole college educated white people who were supposed to know better.

I like to bike through the city I live in a lot (until it gets cold) and this takes me through some poor black neighborhoods. Just in the few years I’ve lived here (not a bad city, sort of up-and-coming Midwestern city), and I would say at least once every few weeks one or some (groups are usually worse) of the local hooligans either throw bottles or rocks at me or start running after me (at which point are bike faster, needless to say) while shouting ‘crackuh’ at me or whatever. I wonder, if white people had a big racial chip on their shoulders and reported incidents of violence, muggings in which they were called racial slurs, threats, etc. as hate crimes at as high a rate as black people do (or even perceived them to be hate crimes), what would the stats look like.

We always here about how we need to have an ‘honest conversation’ about race and racial ‘animus’ in this country. I suppose I don’t know what it’s like to be black, but I would have to be pretty oblivious not to notice that there is a strong strain of anti-white animosity running through poor black communities. And I’m pretty sure it hasn’t gone unnoticed among many white people who live near poor black neighborhoods. The fact that white progressive ‘elites’ in the media and politics insist on acting like it just isn’t there while they kiss Al Sharpton’s ass must, I imagine, only exacerbate the phenomenon of ‘white identity politics.’

Yes, but she’s been getting picked up. Her article arguing against an uptick in violence due to Trump’s election got picked up by at least RCP and Instapundit. I would keep digging the vein that’s producing gold, too.

The nuclear outrage reaction she got from the chick in the background emboldened her… Thats when the crazy lady changed from “You spoke to me in a sexually harassing way” to “YOU JUST SEXUALLY HARASSED ME!!!! Her meltdown at city hall in Seattle was epic

As a misanthrope, I am concerned that any crime I commit can be categorized as a hate crime and therefore subject to enhanced sentencing guidelines. And having witnessed the last few years in American history, I would suggest anybody that ain’t a misanthrope needs to see a mental health professional.

I’m not a supporter of hate crime laws. But here’s a question I have on the subject.

Requiring mens rea for a criminal conviction is a good thing, most around here seem to agree. Which means you are criminalizing the combination of thought and action. “Hate crime”, at least in the US where there aren’t laws against “hate speech” but only enhancements applied to crimes that definitely should be crimes, is sort of an extension of this same idea, no?

I don’t think hate crime laws are necessary or a good idea. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a murderer to get a slightly longer sentence because of what motivated the murder as part of the normal sentencing process.

Zeb- isn’t that the difference between “involuntary” manslaughter, manslaughter, and murder? If I kill someone by beating them over the head with a hammer 50 times, does it really matter if I said “nigger” between the 26th and 27th blows?

Look at the stats comparing “black male on white female” rape and vice-versa. Since rape is not about sex, but about “power and domination”, does an interracial rape deserve a harsher penalty because of the choice of victim?

More importantly, the past election has impacted so many couples that reports of hate-fucking are now on the rise. Hate-based fucking is not healthy, and I fear our new president will be the cause of even more loathsome lovemaking. We are not safe in our bedrooms, we are not safe in the back seats of our cars, and most appallingly we are not safe after we bring our dates behind the dumpster at Denny’s.

Pretty uneducated. Every human ever to have worn high heels was an ape in high heels. We’re all apes – great apes, to be specific. There will be two new apes in the White House presiding over a nation of apes. Apes will write about them, apes will love or loathe them, apes will show indifference. An ape writes this now.

Strictly speaking this is true. But common usage of the word “ape” still strongly implies a non-human ape. And comparisons to lesser primates have long been used to insult black people. Probably best just to steer away from calling black people apes or monkeys if you don’t want to be called racist.

You could call her a “nigger” too with no ill intent, but no one is going to give a shit what you meant.

It was mostly tongue-in-cheek humor. That said, really nobody should be offended at being called an ape any more than we should be offended at being called a mammal or vertebrate or any other classification that applies to both humans and non-human species.

Back to your regularly scheduled jokes:

What really offended Democrats was the implication that they were vertebrates and, therefore, weren’t spineless. Our reptilian overlords reject their classification as mammals as insulting. We finally elected our first orange-utan. In other news, Donald Trump was called “slime” today, prompting offense in the slime, ooze, and muck community and touching off protests. One protester was quoted, “We will not stand idly by while our peoples are compared to that multicellular troglodyte.” A spokesperson for troglodytes could not be reached at this time.

Apparently the tweets of some folks in Clay County, West Virginia are important, why? I’m sure Clay County has wonderful folks, the best, but are these two individuals actually key members of the Trump transition team or something?

I’m not sure how you count a made up category. This is like measuring the increase in psychotic tendencies as measured by phrenologists. It’s possibly useful as a measure of our descent into superstition.

Those statistics sound really bad. If we assume racial hatred is a common factor in mixed-race murders, and the murder rate is representative of that, we might conclude that blacks are extremely racist and violent towards white people.

It’s actually worse than the split suggests because blacks only make up some 12% of the population and whites are somewhere near 70%. If race is a common denominator in interracial murder and the murder statistics are representative of that, then blacks are committing the hate crime of murder at almost 6 times their proportion of the population ((500/729)/.12). Meanwhile, whites are committing such hate crimes at less than half their proportion of the population ((229/729)/.70).

If interracial murder statistics are a guide regarding the proportionate share of hate crime across the board, then of that 57% of the hate crime that’s characterized as being about race, I’d expect 92% (6/6.5) of those complaints to come from whites who were targeted by blacks.

If the data doesn’t show that, then I have three likely explanations: 1) serious bias in terms of how this data is collected 2) white victims are reluctant to characterize their experience as hate crime, 3) whatever we’re trying to measure by using the word “hate crime” is highly subjective.

I hereby define saying anything negative about Donald Trump to be a hate crime. Watch the crime rate soar under the Trump presidency. As Tarzan once said “You can call a jackal a lion, but it will not make him brave” Note to liberals and millennials; that quote is from a work of fiction.

If you examine the actual criminal justice stats (see the DOJ/FBI Uniform Crime Reports website) the vast majority of inter-racial crime is committed by “people of color.” For example, blacks commit something like half of all murders in America, and a totally disproportionate number of inter-racial rapes/sexual assaults. But this does not fit into the “narrative” which the race hustlers want to push. So they invent a new category called “hatecrime.” It’s Orwellian because it means that someone can be given a penalty enhancement for thinking thoughts which are not in line with the prevailing liberal mindset.

You might look at the large amount of violence committed by Black Lives Matter and people affiliated with it. This has included arson, intimidation and assault. Consider this report of how unarmed teens from BLM beat motorists while chanting “Black Power.” How many of them were charged with hatecrime?http://www.dailywire.com/news/…..el-qazvini

Do I have to comment on the recent violence and attacks on private property initiated by Leftists because they did not like the outcome of last week’s election?

And the vandalism of Confederate monuments and graves which has been occurring over the last year or so…is that hatecrime? Or do they not count?

The reality is that there is a grotesque double standard at work to invert the reality of who is behind the wave of inter-racial crime in America.

I agree with your comment regarding hate crimes not being labeled for what they are. I thought of the case you cited and MANY others. So many I can pull off the top of my head, recent and going back many years as I’ve been researching this for the last six months. Cases of people being set on fire and the perps actually saying they hate whites. None of those cases some involving children as young as 3, were not charged as hate crimes. Judging the thoughts of the perp isn’t an option in these instances but is arbitrarily applied it seems (like all laws it seems to me). I don’t know which is more disturbing- the viciousness and level of depravity of the crimes themselves, or the insidious denial which helps to enable these crimes. You’re racist if you challenge the narratives. Hostility based on ‘race’ has been stoked in this country. There are dozens and dozens of cases involving blacks sucker punching whites totally unprovoked (which resulted in death on numerous occasions) but can you show me dozens and dozens of whites or Asians doing this to whomever? No. I’ve tried to find those cases. It’s a ratio of 50 to 1 or even more. Hugely disproportionate number. People are married to narratives and it’s not as common as I wish it were for people to dig deeper than their biases allow.

This data set is so deeply flawed it should be criminalized LOL. I’ve been researching cases which are absolutely hate crimes but are not being charged as hate crimes. The volume of these incidents mind blowing. Apparently a hate crime is only prosecuted as such under certain circumstances which remains unclear. If the perp isn’t white, and victim is white- it requires an act of God to get it charged accordingly. Let’s see- a recent rape & throat cutting case where black male stated “this is what you get for 400 years of….” Will it be handled as a hate crime? Is it not a hate crime? Or the Vanderbilt gang rape of white woman one of the black rapists urinated on her face said “bitch this is for 400 years of slavery” I suppose there’s some nuance in the law that categorizes these as not being hate crimes but let’s get real here. In a city where you have an epidemic of black on white strong arm robberies or black on Asian strong arm robberies- even when a pattern of abuse towards a specific ethnicity is obvious to anyone with half a brain it’s not acknowledged. I’ll likely be called a racist for wanting to point this out. The FBI hate crime database is bullshit. It doesn’t even begin to quantify the hate crimes that are happening throughout the USA. knockout game is another example of a hate crime pattern & one that is being aggressively denied.

Social justice can’t be just for some rather than for everyone. Hate comes in a diverse rainbow of colors.

until I looked at the paycheck saying $4730 , I did not believe that…my… brother woz like actualy bringing in money part time from there computar. . there friend brother started doing this for less than 7 months and resently paid for the morgage on there home and bought a new Cadillac …….

until I looked at the paycheck saying $4730 , I did not believe that…my… brother woz like actualy bringing in money part time from there computar. . there friend brother started doing this for less than 7 months and resently paid for the morgage on there home and bought a new Cadillac …….

until I looked at the paycheck saying $4730 , I did not believe that…my… brother woz like actualy bringing in money part time from there computar. . there friend brother started doing this for less than 7 months and resently paid for the morgage on there home and bought a new Cadillac …….

until I looked at the paycheck saying $4730 , I did not believe that…my… brother woz like actualy bringing in money part time from there computar. . there friend brother started doing this for less than 7 months and resently paid for the morgage on there home and bought a new Cadillac …….

until I looked at the paycheck saying $4730 , I did not believe that…my… brother woz like actualy bringing in money part time from there computar. . there friend brother started doing this for less than 7 months and resently paid for the morgage on there home and bought a new Cadillac …….